In motor vehicles, sensors of the widest variety are continually used for monitoring a vehicle's surroundings. Ultrasound sensors are used for parking assistance systems, radar sensors for distance monitoring systems, cameras for indirect viewing systems and thermal imaging cameras for detecting persons in the vicinity of the vehicle.
FIG. 1 (prior art) shows a sensor 10 that includes a sensor main body 11 from which a sensor head 12 protrudes. The sensor 10 is held in a sensor holder 13. The sensor holder 13 includes a sensor head receiver niche 14 with a sensor head opening 15 and two screw receivers 16 and 17 that extend on the left and on the right of the sensor head opening 15 in a direction parallel to the sensor main body 11. The sensor main body 11 includes two fastening clips 18 and 19 with screw holes 20, 21 located on the left and right away from the sensor main body 11. The sensor 10 is inserted into the sensor holder 13, and the two fastening clips 18 and 19 come to rest on the upper ends of the two screw receivers 16 and 17. Sensor 10 and sensor holder 13 are screwed together using screws that are not shown in FIG. 1. The height of the two screw receivers 16 and 17 is selected so that the sensor head 12 is aligned with the outside surface 22 of the sensor holder 13.
The sensor 10 is oriented along a sensor axis 23. The sensor main body 11 has a main body center axis 24 that deviates from the sensor axis 23 due to a manufacturing tolerance 25. The sensor head receiver niche 14 and the sensor head opening 15 have a sensor holding axis 26 that passes through the center of the opening 15. Because the sensor 10 is mounted by the fastening clips 18 and 19 arranged symmetrically on the sensor holder 13 relative to the sensor main body 11, the manufacturing tolerance 25 between sensor axis 23 and main body center axis 24 must be taken into consideration in the dimensioning the sensor head opening 15. Therefore, in the assembled state of sensor 10 and sensor holder 13, gap widths varying between 27 and 28 result between the margin of the sensor head opening 15 and the sensor head 12. These gap widths varying between 27 and 28 lead to a visually unsatisfactory result because the human eye is sensitive to such variations in gap width.
A sensor arrangement is sought that improves upon the current manner in which the heads of sensors and cameras protrude from sensor holders outside of vehicles so as to avoid any large variation in the gap width between the sensor head and the opening in the sensor holder.